Economy & Budget

The new budget estimates show that the tax cuts are working and gives us even more rationale for making them permanent.  Despite this good news though, Congress needs to really look to curb spending. It’s much better to let the American people rather than those of us in Washington, DC spend their own money.

Today's report was a factual validation of what we have been saying all along: When the American people keep more of their own money, they grow the economy, and when the economy grows, tax revenues increase. We've heard a lot of talk from people who seem to think that the only way to cut the deficit is to raise taxes; this report unequivocally proves them wrong.

Lowering taxes has fueled sustained economic growth and job growth that ultimately bring more tax dollars into the Treasury, which helps us reduce the deficit.  At the same time, we need to restrain spending, and we're working hard to do this through budget reforms such as my legislative line-item veto and overall efforts to control spending.

Today's announcement of lower deficit projections shows that tax relief paired with spending controls can put our fiscal house in order and eliminate the deficit.

By Christian E. Weller, senior economist; and John S. Irons, director of Budget and Tax Policy, Center for American Progress

President Bush is woefully out of touch with economic realities. “He fails to acknowledge that the economic recovery of the past few years has left millions of American middle-class families behind,

Recently, Reps. Bob Inglis, Spencer Bachus, Rich Boucher and I sent a letter calling for a Judiciary subcommittee hearing on the Commerce Department's pending review of a proposed agreement between VeriSign and ICANN. Valid concerns have been raised that the ".com" domain name registry could become an unregulated monopoly.  In addition, the proposal guarantees VeriSign the opportunity to unilaterally increase prices in most years of the new contract.

It just makes sense that the Committee that has oversight of this issue take a close look. This matter will directly affect Internet operation and cost.

In February of this year, as part of a settlement of litigation between VeriSign and the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) relating to VeriSign's operation of the .com top level domain (TLD) registry, ICANN's Board of Directors narrowly approved changes to the .com registry agreement and submitted them to the Commerce Department for required review and approval. Concerns have been raised about potentially anticompetitive elements of this proposed agreement and its potential for creating a perpetual and unregulated monopoly over the single most valuable asset on the Internet - the .com domain name registry.  These anti-competitive concerns are all the more alarming because .com makes up about 75 percent of domain name registrations in the United States and a significant percentage globally.  Under the terms of the proposed agreement, control of the .com registry would be handed to one company, VeriSign, without any reasonable opportunity for rebidding the contract in the future and without effective limits on the maximum prices charged for .com registrations.  It appears that these provisions would foreclose competition and lead to higher prices for consumers.

Last week I joined with Congressmen Cannon, Bachus and Inglis in calling on House Judiciary Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet, and Intellectual Property Chairman Smith to hold hearings on this matter.  Hearings would allow Members of the Subcommittee to examine the implications and timing of the proposal and ensure that the goals  of competition, consumer choice and innovation that both the Commerce Department and ICANN are obligated to promote are not thwarted.

Although Russia is currently hosting the G-8 Summit in St. Petersburg (July 15-17), there are questions about its eligibility to be a member of the exclusive G-8 club.


Through its plentiful energy resources, large landmass, educated population, permanent membership on the UN Security Council, and extensive civilian and military nuclear infrastructure, Russia plays a key role in world affairs.  These factors influenced the Group of  7 (G-7) major industrial democracies (the United States, France, the United Kingdom, Germany,  Japan,  Italy, and  Canada), to invite Russia to participate in its meetings.  After participating as an observer in four summits, in 1998 Russia became a full member of the group, now renamed the Group of 8(G-8), despite its still-developing economy and the uncertainty regarding the momentum of its democratic reforms.


Since then, however, President Putin has steered Russia away from democracy and toward authoritarianism.  He has increased pressure on opposition political parties and civil society, strengthened state control over national broadcast media, and pursued politically-driven prosecutions of independent business leaders, academics and others voicing criticism of the government.  Regional governors, once directly elected, are now appointed by the Kremlin, and the government has taken a number of steps to reduce electoral competitiveness.  In recognition of this deterioration in democracy, the human rights organization Freedom House has downgraded Russia’s status from “Partly Free

To some people, banking at Wal-Mart seems like a good idea.  It is the world's largest retailer and more than 100 million people shop at their 3,400 American stores every week.  That is why I support letting Wal-Mart have banks in their stores- just not its own bank.  Companies like Wal-Mart, Home Depot and others are trying to take advantage of a loophole in our laws to charter industrial loan companies (ILCs) which act like banks but have no ownership restrictions and less regulation by the federal government.  ILCs are a hot topic these days and now with 14 applications pending, Congress needs to act.



The 61 ILCs in existence have $98 billion in deposits today.  This may be a small figure compared to our whole system but the entire FDIC insurance fund only stands at $49.2 billion.  After the GAO found that the deposits of commercially-owned ILCs may be of higher risk to the insurance fund we must ask, what happens if a commercial firm buys a bank and something goes wrong?  The answer- American taxpayers get to pick up the tab.  This is not how our system was intended to work and that is why today, Rep. Barney Frank and I introduced H.R. 5746, the Industrial Banking Holding Company Act of 2006, to seal up this loophole until Congress chooses an appropriate balance.

Levee and flood control is a life or death situation for the people of coastal Louisiana, and so, it is very disappointing that this report fails to do what Congress mandated: Give us all the facts and show us what it will take to protect coastal Louisiana.

There are numerous differences between the final text and the report reviewed by the Corps/State Project Delivery Team, the Corps’ Independent Technical Review team, and the Independent Peer Review.  Of particular cause for concern is the appearance that the report may have been altered to eliminate important technical information and proposals.  As a result, the modified report omits many recommendations that could have helped protect the people of Louisiana and the nation they serve.

Clearly, the will of Congress has been ignored.  To get the facts, I have today asked the Senate Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee on which I sit to hold investigative hearings into the matter.  We need the facts and our people need protection.

I would welcome the opportunity to vote for a free trade agreement with strong, enforceable labor and environmental protections that benefit American workers. Unfortunately, the U.S.-Oman Free Trade Agreement has neither, and I will vote against it. This FTA builds on the failed NAFTA/CAFTA trade model which encourages corporations to abandon the United States to exploit weak labor and environmental standards in other countries. Much like past free trade agreements, it is not in the best interest of U.S. workers, small businesses, farmers, the economy, or the environment. Rather than continue this frantic "race to the bottom" of worker wages and standards, we should repair the damage caused by past trade deals like NAFTA, before more American workers lose their jobs and before more irreparable damage is done to our environment.